A memorial was erected outside The Crosby in the days following Annie Kim Pham's beating. FILE PHOTO: BRUCE CHAMBERS, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Before we both sit down to lunch, City Manager David Cavazos and I have each passed the corner of Fourth Street and Broadway many times. We’ve cast sad eyes on the sidewalk laden with flowers and messages, a memorial to the girl who was beaten to death outside a downtown club. Many people expect this sort of thing to happen in Santa Ana, which they mistakenly perceive as laden with crime and violence.

It’s truly a shame that Santa Ana is not more celebrated for being a unique, multilingual, multicultural urban experience amid the larger suburban sprawl, much of which was purposely constructed to have a uniform appearance.

One event like the Jan. 18 fatal beating of Annie “Kim” Pham, 23, reverberates in a place that struggles with its reputation in Orange County. It doesn’t matter that Pham was from Huntington Beach. Or that she may have instigated the fight that led to her death. No one pays mind to the fact that the place where Pham was tragically killed isn’t exactly a “night club,” but a tiny slice of bohemia called The Crosby that did blast ’90s hip-hop dance chill music but also offered a creative menu once including a sandwich called “The Starving Artist.”

Cavazos, only 127 days on the job, has unfortunately gained a sense of how Santa Ana hurts twice as hard when this sort of tragedy strikes. We lost a young woman and also got yet another punch.

The negative perception from the beating will linger. Everyone crosses their fingers and hopes: Not for long. I tell him that I feel the city needs to be more pro-active. What city wouldn’t pipe up in the face of such a tragedy to tell the world what actions it was taking in response?

The city, I say, has a unique chance with the decline of traditional media and the uptick of social media and electronic communication to better present itself. He tells me he’s working on these very concepts and hopes to lead a city that can showcase its assets with slick professionally-made marketing materials.

As he orders guacamole at downtown eatery Lola Gaspar, he tells me about the city’s response. I dip chips in his guacamole and become so distracted by the heavenly taste, I fear I don’t have the facts straight. So I talk to Police Chief Carlos Rojas afterwards to make sure I captured the details.

Rojas tells me there were 16 homicides in Santa Ana in 2013, far less than other urban American places. None of these were in the downtown area. In fact, there were only traffic incidents in the five-block strip around the club where the beating occurred in 2013. There were no police calls for service nor crime.

Nonetheless, the city is stepping up police presence with four more police officers on weekends and even more when there are special events, he said. Cavazos and Rojas say they are considering a downtown police substation, the location of which has not been determined but would be great “from the standpoint of visibility.” Rojas said the department is also looking into the installation of video cameras.

Whether any of these strategies would have stopped a senseless killing is unclear, he says. At least things are far better than when he began his career as a patrol officer in 1990, when there were more than 70 homicides annually, he said.

No one agrees more than Ryan Chase, whose family has owned several blocks of Santa Ana’s downtown for decades. Chase was pained by the recent death, but feels it won’t impact business or the downtown’s reputation for long.

“We have hit a critical mass,” Chase said, referring to the permanence of a revitalization of the downtown. It seems there are new businesses opening each day, often at a pace that leaves even the insiders out of the loop on the newest restaurants. I feel that despite this tragedy, we indeed are at a point of no return. I find myself wondering if we might wake up one day and find no more quinceañeara dresses for sale on Fourth Street.

The Crosby, which was one of those places that helped launch this transformation is closed now. So we lost the chance to introduce our new city manager to “The Starving Artist” sandwich and its other creations.

I suggest if he ever needs a change from Lola Gaspar’s guacamole that he turn across Fourth Street from the shuttered Crosby, to the new Tabu Burger Burgers and Bites. To him and others, I recommend the Tabu Burger topped with chile relleno and spicy tomato chutney because it holds a unique mixture of flavors epitomizing the underappreciated flavor of downtown Santa Ana.

Jennifer Delson is a bilingual public relations consultant who works with public issues and personalities. She can be reached at Jennifer@delsonpublicrelations.com.

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